When last we met, we covered the evolution of various supernatural critters from detestable to desirable. Vampires are a particularly striking example of an archetype that began as walking, rotting corpses, and rose to be portrayed as superior to humans in almost every way. And now, with Warm Bodies, zombies have begun to travel the same road. But as this happens, producers of fiction lose a useful tool in the form of a creature that can be killed without remorse. This leaves writers searching for a new archetype to fill the role of humanity’s enemy. Sometimes what they come up with is surprising.

Writer/director Tommy Wirkola has found an unlikely replacement:

witches. His latest work, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, starts out with an abridged retelling of the classic children’s tale of two kids who are apparently abandoned in the woods, find a house made of candy, and are captured by a hideous, cannibalistic crone, until they knock her into her own oven. This refresher is graphic, brutal, and not for children. Hansel and Gretel then vow to spend their lives hunting down and killing witches, and we are treated to a montage of newspaper clippings and wood-cut drawings, showing their exploits over the next fifteen years.

We don’t have to think much for this movie. Hansel (Jeremy Renner) narrates “We learned two important things that day (when they escaped the witch as children). One, never walk into a house made of candy. And two, if you’re going to kill a witch, set her ass on fire.” Good advice.

Gemma Arterton, up to her usual awesomeness.

The main story deals with the twins working a case in Augsburg, investigating the disappearances of 11 children. The witches in this movie display many of the traits we’ve seen in vampires and werewolves in recent years: super human strength (why? Because it’s cool), animal-like movements (why? Because it’s cool), and an apparent black belt in jujitsu (why? … must you ask?). Hansel and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) save a beautiful young woman named Mina (Pihla Viitala) from being wrongfully executed as a witch. Hansel announces to the obligatory mob of villagers that when a woman engages in the black arts, a nasty rot sets in. That’s right, the witches in this movie are essentially walking, rotting corpses. Sound familiar?

Jean Grey gone bad. Or did she already do that?

Is it a good movie? No. But the real questions is how well do the witches satisfy that part of us that just wants to weild a shotgun, as zombies used to do for us? The best thing about this movie is that it’s not afraid to be politically incorrect. The witches are plentiful. They’re ugly. And they’re decidedly unsympathetic. They’re a bit harder to kill than zombies, but the writers always find a way. All this movie really is is a big, silly bonanza of over-the-top stunts, awesome weapons that could never exist and dazzling fireballs. (It’s even sillier than Van Helsing, if you can believe that). It’s the kind of movie where people get knocked through walls, jump up and keep fighting. It doesn’t need to be good; it’s a blast.

But are the witches really all subhuman monsters? Are there none we can identify with? Are all those female

Bad witch.

movie goers who spent their teen years fantasizing about being witches and making love potions going to be left out in the cold?

Well, we eventually learn that, in fact, Mina is a witch, a “white witch” who uses her powers for “good.” Good witches don’t have the rot set in. So how do we tell a good witch from a bad? We look at their outward appearance. How delightfully shallow. Of course, even Mina admits that there are not many good witches, so the good news is most of the witches are just going to be fodder for the awesome fight scenes.

To be fair, there are some clever ideas in this movie, such as the glass milk bottles that bear pictures of the missing children, or the subplot in which Hansel has to take an insulin shot every day, due to all the candy the witch made him eat as a child to fatten him up. There is also a fresh take on the reason the twins’ parents abandoned them in the forest that fateful night. But this is also one of the nastiest movies I have ever seen. Not only is it excessively gory, but the subject matter is pretty intense. There are graphic scenes of children being starved and terrorized by the witches (I understand there were some scenes cut out that were even worse) and one of a witch magically forcing a teen boy to shoot his own mother. Rape is also hinted at. After all, the original “children’s tale” is pretty nasty when you think about it. The Brothers Grimm tended to live up to their name.

Good witch. See the difference?

I expect witches’ time on popular fiction’s crap list will be briefer than that of some other creatures, if only because we’re so accustomed to seeing pretty witches save the day. So what’s going to come next? Maybe vampires will cycle around for another run. Personally, I think I’ll stick with my old standby: zombies.

I love a good time-travel story. From the Terminator films, Back to the Future series, and ripping yarns like the 2000 film Frequency, there is something alluring and exciting about the past and future colliding. Even the recent Star Trek reboot found a few wormholes. Time travel will always come across in film as a tricky contradicting device full of paradoxes. In Prince of Persia, the film bases its premise on the possibility that time travel and its power may fall into the wrong hands (as all films of this sort do), but it presents time travel in a limited arrangement.

The plot introduces the Persian empire at the height of its power. Its king is paraded through the streets where he comes across a defiant young boy who seeks to protect another young man from punishment as a result of thievery. In fact, it feels very similar to a live-action version of Disney’s Aladdin. This protective boy, Dastan, stirs up the king’s heart, and the orphaned boy is taken into the royal family as a young prince. Later on he grows up to become the adult Jake Gyllenhaal, bulked up with flowing dark hair and bronzed skin attributed to multiple trips to the tanning salon. He is a trained warrior, and trusted commander in the nation’s army. Dastan’s royal brothers are set to capture the peaceful city of Almut. Though Dastan’s skills as a fighter are commendable among his siblings, they feel he is not ready for such a massive attack. To prove himself worthy, Dastan scaffolds the wall of Almut and lays siege to the city, leading a small band of soldiers to victory before the royal brothers arrive. Dastan becomes a hero, and as such, takes a handsome dagger from Almut—one with mystical powers.

During a celebration, the ceremony is interrupted when a prestigious cloak, laced with an acidic poison, is offered to the king and kills him very quickly. Dastan, having been asked to offer the cloak before the ceremony, appears to be the traitor with the intent of taking the throne. Quickly afoot from his own people, Dastan escapes with a princess of Almut, Tamina (Gemma Arterton) captured shortly following the attack. Tamina’s sole interest is in protecting the dagger Dastan carries and returning it, as it has the power to rewind a minute (or roughly so) in time. It soon becomes apparent to Dastan that someone, most likely his eldest brother, must have been after the dagger for its power. The story eventually expands the power of the dagger in revealing an underground stone ruled by the gods that can ultimately lead to a total reversal of history and mankind’s complete destruction. What else is new?

Caught in this storm of chaos, Dastan seeks out his uncle (Ben Kingsley), the only man he can trust to clear his name and restore order in the kingdom, as well as return the dagger to safety.

Regarding the dagger and its power, I love how the story has found a way to eliminate the paradox of time travel. The dagger holds a button on it, that if pressed with the proper sand in it (dopey, I know), simply rewinds time back about a minute. Only the holder of the dagger knows that any change has taken place. So in essence, there really isn’t any traveling in time—time is simply rewinding itself, and this is the limit of the dagger. I like the premise, and the limited power there. But of course the premise takes things to a new level once man’s history is revealed. The gods apparently had wiped out all of humanity but one young girl who pleaded to live and was granted her survival. She was given this dagger of power and it has been kept in secret… blah, blah, blah. The narrative makes a huge leap to potential world annihalation, and once this happens, the story gets incredibly sloppy and stitched together, when it could have stuck to this dagger’s original limit of power. I’m sure that would have been more enjoyable.

Prince of Persia is based on a video game series I haven’t played, nor ever will I’m sure. And of course, this coulda-shoulda-woulda blockbuster film from Producer Jerry Bruckheimer (hoping so desperately to turn this into a Pirates of the Caribbean franchise) delivers a very expensive product. You can see it onscreen, even if a few of the digital shots look a little hammy. With a lot opportunity here, the film turns to silliness to try and exact the charm of that Johnny Depp adventure. The problem is that Gyllenhaal is no Depp. And as much leaping and jumping around as Gyllenhaal’s stuntmen do, as muscle-bound as the actor has become, it doesn’t bring natural charisma or wit to his performance as a side effect.

The story doesn’t help Gyllenhaal’s cause. Pirates was silly, yes, but the characters carried the plot. Once Prince of Persia evolves into a history lesson on the gods’ wiping out humanity, and their intent on doing so again if the dagger is misused, I felt the story crumbling in on itself, as if I could see the writers in the background trying to staple ideas together. Ultimately, the film gets too big, too silly, and too careless for any of its original ambitions to prevail, and the filmmakers should have realized that a mammoth production wouldn’t sell itself. Pirates of the Caribbean certainly didn’t. Bruckheimer had his ace in the hole after all was said and done—Johnny Depp making an icon out of Jack Sparrow. Unfortunately he failed to repeat that process. While Persia still isn’t quite the mess that the third Pirates film became, it’s still about as silly and unpolished. As a marginally enjoyable big-budget diversion, I found this film to be watchable, but I can’t heartily recommend it.

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